This collection encompasses 50-plus years of interviews, readings, speeches, and reports on the vibrant literary scene in Minnesota. Not only home to giants F. Scott Fitzgerald and Sinclair Lewis, our state has an array of incredible contemporary poets, novelists, and playwrights. Their words make up majority of this collection.
Repeatedly being named the “Most Literate City in the United States,” the Twin Cities has played host to numerous visiting national writers via book tours, festivals, and lectures. Many recordings of these are also included.
This project was funded by the National Historical Publications & Records Commission.
May 4, 2005 - Duluth cookbook author Bea Ojakangas has won an award from the James Beard Foundation in New York City. Chefs and food writers around the country voted to induct Ojakangas into the Cookbook Hall of Fame. They cited her "Great Scandinavian Baking Book" as having lasting impact in the field. She published it 15 years ago, after research on recipes in the Scandinavian countries.
May 16, 2005 - Film director Robert Altman is set to direct a movie based on Garrison Keillors 'A Prairie Home Companion' over the summer. Altman who is known for such hits as "MASH", "Nashville" and "The Player" says he's long been a Keillor fan.
May 17, 2005 - Minnesota poet Robert Bly reads the poem "Driving toward the Lac Qui Parle River."
May 26, 2005 -
May 26, 2005 -
May 28, 2005 -
May 30, 2005 - opular Twin Cities author Lorna Landvik is trying something new in her latest novel, "Oh My Stars." For the first time she's set a story outside of Minnesota and in a period before she was born. It's the depression-era story of Violet Mathers, an 18 year old Kentucky girl who's been beaten down by life. Just as she reaches her lowest point, she winds up traveling the midwest with a trio of musicians.
June 7, 2005 - Ma Rainey's Black Bottom is a 1982 play - one of the ten-play Pittsburgh Cycle by August Wilson. This archive recording is a dub of a commercial recording onto reel to reel tape.
June 9, 2005 - What would you do if you woke up one morning, and didn't recognize where you were? Not only that, you didn't know WHO you were? A new Lee Blessing play at the Guthrie Lab in Minneapolis explores the fluid nature of memory.
June 14, 2005 - Baseball fans who attend games at the Metrodome in Minneapolis have a choice of programs. In addition to the official program, published by the Twins, there is another independently-produced option with a very different editorial perspective. Despite a distinct marketing disadvantage, the publishers of Gameday have cultivated a loyal customer base. MPR’s Jim Bickal takes a look…and a read.